_Wawona Hotel's Tentative Schedule:

12/02/2011

Year in Yosemite: Indian Summer

I took a walk today. I had to. In one of the most surprising turns of events since we moved to Yosemite National Park almost three years ago, winter seems to have gotten confused and forgotten to show up. Suddenly temperatures are springtime warm, the skies are a deep azure blue and there are enough flies zipping through the air to make me think they got it wrong too. And so I walk, wanting to drink it all in while I can, feeling both amazed and thankful.

Last year at this time the park was already knee-deep in snow. Coming back from Thanksgiving vacation we were greeted by the Highway Patrol and required to “chain up” before driving the last two miles from Highway 41 to Yosemite. When my husband got out of the car to put ours on, it was so cold and dark that after half an hour of trying, he jumped in the car and announced we were heading back down to Oakhurst, half an hour away. I was secretly hoping that meant a motel stop for the night, but no, he just wanted the brightness of a gas station and a warmer place to work. On the way back up the hill, the chains broke. Ever resourceful, my husband tied them together and we made it home, but not before a Yosemite friend had gone up and down that hill in the snow, the ice and the dark trying to find us and help. That’s both the blessing and curse of Yosemite. Weather so wicked it can easily defeat you. Friends so kind they always have your back.

This morning, anticipating the inevitable, I spent an hour getting out winter jackets, hats, gloves and boots from the bins where they’d spent the summer. Rumor has it that snow is on the way. My husband (who hates winter with the same ferocity with which our daughter loves it) headed south. It might not sound romantic to the casual listener, but before he left he watched to make sure I knew how to get the generator working, wrote notes about winterizing the house and made sure the right chains were with the right car. Then he jumped in our strictly-for-summer hybrid and, like a smart goose, headed south. (Once winter comes, we’re an all Subaru family). His parting words were a caution to pull the cars into the garage before predicted wind gusts of 75 miles an hour hit tomorrow.

It’s in moments like these that I fixate on the Southern Miwok who lived in Yosemite long before Europeans ever found America’s shores. No Diane Sawyer and her Made in America campaign for them. Everything about their lives was authentically American and locally made, from their snowshoes fashioned from wooden hoops wrapped with grape vines to their deer skin clothes and rabbit fur capes.

But it’s what they didn’t wear that interests me. Many a mountain man and European traveler spoke in awe of the locals’ ability to wear practically nothing even as temperatures plummeted. So in tune were they with the natural world that their core body temperature stayed constant without the help of hats, gloves, parkas, and snow pants and boots. If things got really bad—and this being Yosemite of course it did—like my husband they headed south. By their reasoning, when the acorns were gathered and the animals they relied on for dinner headed for lower ground, it only made sense to do the same. I’d say most of America agrees with them. In time the entire country will probably be living in the Sunbelt. But then, who’d be there to see the trees wearing the latest in red and gold or smell the pines baking in the sun? Today I was here to take in one of fall’s last great pleasures. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

-- Jamie Simons/photos by Jon Jay

In May 2009, while hiking in Yosemite National Park, long-time Los Angeles resident Jamie Simons turned to her husband and said, "I want to live here." Jamie and her family have since lived in the park. Check out all of her blog articles by clicking here.

Tioga and Hetch Hetchy Roads Temporarily Close in Yosemite National ParkHigh Winds Expected in the Area

The Tioga Road (Highway 120 east of the Crane Flat Gas Station) and the Hetch Hetchy Road in Yosemite National Park will be temporarily closing tonight, Wednesday, November 30, 2011 at 8:00 p.m. A high wind warning has been issued for the Yosemite area starting tonight, through Friday morning, December 2, that may impact driving conditions along the roadway. The Tioga Road and the Hetch Hetchy Road will remain closed until further assessments can be made. An announcement will be made pending additional road closure changes.

Winds are expected to be between 20 and 40 miles per hour, with localized gusts up to 60 miles per hour in Yosemite Valley. Winds at the higher elevations of the park are expected to be between 50 and 60 miles per hour with localized gusts in excess of 75 miles per hour. The strongest winds are expected in the area between 4:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. tomorrow, December 1.

There is the potential for very strong damaging winds with down trees and power lines and potential structure damage throughout the park. Visitors are urged to use caution while in Yosemite National Park during this high wind warning.

All roads within the park are subject to temporary closures due to hazardous driving conditions. Additionally, all roads are subject to potential closure without advanced notice due to safety concerns.

Larry Duke Receives Lifetime Achievement Award

Recently, the Remington company invited Wawona resident illustrator (and illustrious resident), Larry Duke, to a ceremony where he was awarded the Remington Company's Lifetime Achievement Award. Larry created a total of 15 Bullet Knife Posters from 1982 - 1997. The company thanked Larry for his contributions to Remington's history.

Larry had a great time with the Remington folks. They flew him First Class, put him up in a fancy hotel and wined and dined him. (According to a source who will remain nameless, he came back positively full of himself..!)

All the originals of the artwork for all the posters were elegantly hung in the large foyer of their main, very fancy, office building. Larry loved seeing all the original work and was pleased to see that it was still very much respected. All the employees came out to meet him like he was some kind of celebrity (which, of course, we know he is). Congratulations, Larry! Your artwork is truly fantastic and the award is more than well-deserved.

11/02/2011

Year in Yosemite: A Grand Vision

I once interviewed an artist who had been raised in Yosemite Valley from the time he was a toddler until he left for college in Manhattan. Asked how he made the transition from living in a national park to living in America's largest city, he replied, "It was easy. They remind me of each other." At the time, I chalked his comment up to an artist's sensibility. But then several more people told me that their two favorite places on Earth were Yosemite and Manhattan. Coincidence? Or something more?

Obviously both places are defined by massive walls that tower overhead (and let's face it, the Valley floor in summer feels like Manhattan at rush hour), but, that said, I couldn't help but wonder why so many people seemed to feel a connection between two places that, to me at least, seemed so different. Then I read Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life. There, on page 323, in a chapter called “The Garden,” I had my aha moment. Both places were heavily shaped and influenced by the vision of one man -- and that man was Frederick Law Olmstead.

In 1857, at the age of 35, Olmstead won his first commission as a landscape architect. The place was 840 acres of scrub and marshland in what was then the far reaches of Manhattan -- now known as Central Park. At the time, his only experience moving earth was as a farmer. He hadn't a clue how to draft a blueprint. But he'd witnessed the British movement away from the structured, geometric gardens of France and Italy to a more pastoral design. He wanted the same for America, only better. In Europe, parks and countryside retreats were strictly the domain of the aristocracy, the rich and the well connected. A patriotic American, Olmstead believed the government had a moral obligation to provide green space -- huge, great, massive tracts of it -- for all the people to enjoy.

Teaming up with architect Calvert Vaux (who knew his way around a drafting table), Olmstead was, in Bryson's words, absolutely against anything "noisy, vigorous or fun. He especially didn't want diversions like zoos and boating lakes -- the very sorts of amusements users craved." Instead, Olmstead felt that parks should have a wildness to them in order to provide opportunity for reflection and renewal. Only then could nature act as an antidote to the crushing noise, daily stresses and overcrowding of urban life. But the "masses" for whom he'd designed Central Park didn't see things quite his way. Hence the boating lake, pavilions, skating rink and zoo that help make Central Park what it is today.

Disappointed, Olmstead accepted a job out West working for the flamboyant John and Jessie Fremont. Hired to run their mining operation in Mariposa County, he hated every moment of his stay, finding Californians to be "thriftless, fortune-hunting, improvident, gambling vagabonds." He had even worse things to say about the people we call pioneers. But he did have a solution. A park -- one done on a massive scale -- designed by heaven and Frederick Olmstead to act as a civilizing force. He called it "Yo Semite."

To accomplish this, he proposed a radical idea. Writing as the head of a commission that was to decide how the Yosemite land grant (signed into law by Abraham Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War) should be administered, Olmstead wrote that

It is the main duty of government, if it is not the sole duty of government, to provide means of protection to all citizens in the pursuit of happiness against the obstacles otherwise insurmountable, which the selfishness of individuals or combinations of individuals is liable to interpose to that pursuit.

To ensure that Yo Semite, his park of the people, matched his vision, he drew up plans that included everything from a road for stagecoaches to campgrounds for visitors and housing for employees. His fellow commissioners were so horrified by his idea of nature as a healing and civilizing force for everyone for all times (paid for by the government), that they repressed his report. It would be years before it was released.

Today Olmstead's vision for Yosemite -- as well as his basic notions about urban and wilderness parks -- reign supreme. Over 100 years ago, Olmstead called for Yosemite's visitor services and roads to be centralized to protect the rest of the park from overuse. At a time when only a smattering of people had the money or time to visit Yosemite (it took three days on horseback to get from Stockton to the Valley in 1865), Olmstead spoke of a future when millions would enjoy its majestic wonders.

And while it might not seem like it when you are sitting in a traffic jam in the Valley in August, the Valley -- with its dense concentration of visitor services and roads -- is doing just what Olmstead envisioned. The five percent of Yosemite that's developed allows the other 95 percent to be wild, leaving the majority of the park as a place for reflection and renewal.

All of which makes me wonder if Central Park and Yosemite are Olmstead's great ying and yang. One offers refuge in the midst of a city. The other offers a small city (complete with post office, courthouse, library, schools, housing, pizza parlors, hotels, restaurants and gift shops) in the midst of wilderness.

If people find joy in both places, are they responding to the vision of one man?

-- Jamie Simons/Photos by Nancy Casolaro

In May 2009, while hiking in Yosemite National Park, long-time Los Angeles resident Jamie Simons turned to her husband and said, "I want to live here." Jamie and her family have since lived in the park. Check out all of her blog articles by clicking here.

November 18, 2011

Merced River Plan UpdateWe would like to thank everyone who took the time to come to one of the alternatives workshops and everyone who has submitted workbook comments. We have enjoyed sharing with you some of the challenges and considerations that we are dealing with. We especially enjoyed hearing your thoughts on them.

We are extending the comment period for the workbook to December 14, 2011, in response to comments and requests we have received thus far. The planning team will begin putting together and refining alternatives over the next couple months. Your comments and feedback on the workbook will help

Using feedback from the public, we will release an overview of the draft Merced River Plan alternatives in a newsletter in late winter 2012. A 30-day public comment period will follow.

Next Open House: January 25, 2012Since there are no new updates on the park’s current plans and projects at this time, we are canceling the previously scheduled November 30, 2011, open house. We look forward to seeing you at the next open house on January 25, 2012.

11/02/2011

Year in Yosemite: Fore Ever

The Wawona Golf Course was our nation's first organic course.

Yosemite National Park is one of the only national parks to host a golf course within its boundaries. For the public record, I own the sixth hole. Not own as in, I hit a hole-in-one there and now both the sixth hole and I are famous. I don’t golf. But I think of it as mine just the same. That’s because each year during Wawona Elementary School’s Golf Tournament and Fundraiser, it’s the place I sit waiting to witness someone else make a hole-in-one. If they do (and so far no one has), they instantly win a car. And while it would be thrilling to see someone win both the hole and the car, it’s not the reason I sign up for sixth-hole duty each year. Nope. My reasons have to do with its quiet and beauty and the sheer audacious resilience of the place.

Originally designed in 1917 for the Washburn brothers (the original owners of the Wawona Hotel), the Wawona Golf Course became part of Yosemite National Park when the Wawona Hotel and its surroundings were deeded to the federal government in 1932. More interested in wilderness than golf courses, the federal government found they couldn’t get rid of the course (it was there before they took ownership), but they could let it die of benign neglect. Which is exactly what they set out to do until a man named Kim Porter showed up in 1980. He became obsessed with restoring the nine-hole golf course to its former glory — no mean feat when it’s inside a national park.

Clearly, using pesticides to restore the greens was out of the question, so he went organic, making Wawona the first organic golf course in the nation. He combined natural grasses to keep the fairways and greens healthy, relied on the area’s hawks, owls and eagles to keep the rodent population under control and watered it all with reclaimed water. Once the fairways and greens were in good working order, he turned to the wilderness, letting it take over any sections of the course that weren’t crucial to play. To me, one of the most beautiful sections of the course is, you got it, the sixth hole, where a restored riparian habitat sits side by side with a par-three hole.

But I’m not the only one impressed by Kim Porter’s strategy. The Wawona Golf Course garnered the prestigious Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Award, a nod to the fact that this ecologically correct piece of earth is beloved by golfers and non-golfers alike. Where else can you sit at the edge of a green and listen to wildlife (bears and mountain lions included) root around in the forest? Or watch deer mosey across the fairway between players? Or take a hike on a trail when your game is done? It seems fitting to me that this is the place where our little school holds its major fundraiser each year. Because, like the golf course, in order to exist we’ve had to learn to work with what we have, relying on the love of the community that fought to keep the golf course here and now works like mad to keep the school alive.

Two years ago the local school district shut our school. The federal government gave us money to keep it going but those monies are caught up in a bureaucratic boondoggle of epic proportions. And so we have to count on the kindness, and donations, of both friends and strangers to keep our doors open, all the while hoping for a miracle.

On the day of the golf tournament, the sun filled the sky and the scent of autumn filled the air. Then around noon, clouds moved in, bringing with them colder temperatures and worry. If it rained, would our fundraiser, with its moneymaking silent auction and BBQ, be cancelled? At 2 p.m., a call came in from Yosemite Valley—a freak storm had dumped over an inch of rain in just an hour. The Valley was flooded; restaurants and stores were closed. At 3 p.m., with storm clouds building, a roll of thunder went so long and loud that I scurried from my sixth-hole chair and headed for the safety of the Wawona Hotel. At 4 p.m., the sun returned ... only a few sprinkles had fallen on our day. I took it as a sign. Perhaps, like Kim Porter and the golf course, the school will flourish, proving the power of an audacious dream and a resilient nature. That’s a hole in one I’d like to see.

-- Jamie Simons/Photos by Jon Jay

In May 2009, while hiking in Yosemite National Park, long-time Los Angeles resident Jamie Simons turned to her husband and said, "I want to live here." Jamie and her family have since lived in the park. Check out all of her blog articles by clicking here.